Robyn Hasty

My work begins in my guts, rising from visceral desires whose intensity call to be acknowledged. I carry these acknowledgements as beacons, they lead to uncomfortable spaces within my psyche. My work unpacks a childhood narrative where I am abused, my dad is in prison, my mother is complicit, they both fail to uphold their responsibility as caretakers. I make art from this space of vulnerability, of a deep sense of self-annihilation that will not accept this history. I strive to envision an alternative world where self-empowerment practiced by all people constructs a compassionate and accountable society.

Photography is a medium that allows me to connect to people and influence our social world. That connection continues to be informed by a radical vision of world-reshaping that is neither utopic nor nihilistic– it acknowledges the suffering, anxieties, darkness, imperfections within all of us, but frames our shared trauma as the thread that connects us to one another. My eye as a photographer is one of listening, acceptance, and collaboration. I give my subjects agency to be in their own skin. Through an art-making ritual that we perform together, we meet on equal footing as agents in command of our own selves.

In my most recent body of work, “Z”, I explore gender fluidity with transgender, cisgender and a spectrum of gender non-conforming individuals. The series of nude portraits records intimate interactions developed over the course of a shoot; conversations that consider power dynamics, gender expression, what should be revealed or concealed, participatory consent. I focus on the eyes as a method of cultivating both agency and accountability. The subjects gaze directly at the camera, the viewer stands where I once stood. To redefine the typical artist/subject/viewer relationship by including the viewer moves the act of viewing outside of spectatorship. It compels the viewer to act; to become self-aware.

The images vibrate in time and space as object, performance, and ephemeral moment alchemized as silver particles on panes of glass. My photographs involve obsolete technology– Wet Plate Collodion— but my choice to use it is not nostalgic. It is a process that allows me to touch and transform all of my tools; mixing the chemistry from raw materials, building the cameras, polishing the plates. Processing a Wet-Plate image is slow and volatile, demanding presence in the moment. The materiality I am working with and the chemistry between myself and the subject is precarious, fragile, always slightly beyond control. The sense of uncertainty is critical to my practice. When I submerge the plate in the fixer bath and see the image sharpen through a cloud of white haze, it feels like magic.

This kind of magic is not fantasy. It is magic conceived in the realm of imagination, that crosses the threshold into reality. I see this truth in each image that comes into existence, rewriting memory. Art is my guide into the world of possibility and mystery that seeks to break away from legacy. The struggle against oppression, against limitation, against our own history is a deeply human fight. It extends beyond the individual, yet it is always personal. At times the fight seems bigger than me, vast and insurmountable; yet, I know that a singular ripple outward has resonance beyond the self. This is how I situate my art in the field of “social practice.”

My work is driven by a rubric of ethical aesthetics where form and process are inseparable. My images are often called beautiful, but I conceive of beauty as a point of access to world-shifting ideas. Beneath the surface my work reflects a system of belief, of making, of existence that overthrows a dark legacy by giving agency to individual voices to be seen on their own terms.

CV

EDUCATION

2007 BFA Parsons School of Design, New York, NY.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2015
Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation, “Z” , Brooklyn, NY.

2012
Kesting/Ray, “On the River: Stories from the heart of glorious abandon, where you cannot see what lays beyond the next bend” , New York, NY.
Weldon Arts, “Dark Corners, Savage Secrets”, Brooklyn, NY.

2009
Conflux, Panel Discussion: “Swimming Cities of Serenissima: Making and riding beautiful junk from Koper to Venice with many dirty people, putting on a show, and then taking it all apart again.”, New York, NY.